Sunday Story...Pain Cave

Sunday Story…Pain Cave

It had to be uncomfortable, carrying that much weight around. She was walking on the sides of the feet, out of breath from the door to the car, hurting in every joint trying to support the weight. It hadn’t happened overnight. It was slow and insidious, the result of bad food and lack of activity. And now it looks like an impossible task, like climbing K2 in your street clothes with no guide. And really, it’s OK the way it is. This is pain she knows, pain she understands, and although painful, it is comfortable like wearing shoes that don’t fit quite right…you get used to them.

I often see people who are stuck in their lives. The pain they are living with is the one they are comfortable with. This pain is familiar, it has family feel to it, kind of warm and fuzzy even though I know it hurts and I know it isn’t good for me.

There are lots of places we all get stuck…myself included. Sometimes we get stuck in our relationships. You know we get complacent, we begin to think it’s OK, it’s good, we don’t really need to work on it anymore. Or maybe it’s worse than OK. Maybe it’s bad and we know it…abusive or worse. Yet we stay since we don’t know what is on the other side. Maybe the other side has pain that will be even worse! Maybe the other side holds a loneliness that we will find unbearable. And then there is the pain of making change too.

Sometimes we get stuck around our health and fitness. We have covered this ground before. It is very easy to give up on these areas. And as we age it gets harder and harder to get back in shape. If you have done it before you remember the pain that went into it. And you know that the way you feel isn’t really that bad is it? And it is easy, let’s be honest. It’s easy (and cheap) to eat crap food. It’s easy to sit and not move. It’s easy to be just like everyone else you see. You don’t have to stand out one way or the other…you have achieved terminal normality.

Sometimes we get stuck around our jobs or our finances. Often we just give up on our dreams, the dreams we held when we were younger…maybe dreams of being a doctor, or a firefighter, or a teacher. The hurdles we have to jump to get there look just too large. Plus what I am doing is working, after all. What I am doing is what I have always done. And what I have been getting from doing that is OK. It works. And really why should I put myself out to do anything more? After all I will be ___________(insert your age here four years from now) and that just looks too old to do whatever it is that I really dream of doing. You are OK, you are going to settle into your rut (grave) and continue that slow slide into mediocrity.

Aren’t you tired of all that yet? How is terminal normality working for you? How is it working for your kids? After all they are looking at you living out of your pain cave and wondering why you don’t do something about it. Worse yet you are training them to discover their own pain caves to live in. You are setting the example of how grownups live while at the same time trying to get them to understand that the world is wide open and they can do anything they want to do. It is this sort of hypocrisy that our children find so confusing. We are saying one thing and doing quite another.

I suggest you start looking around your life and inspecting some of those stuck places. I suggest you get your flashlight out and start illuminating that pain cave. You can flush out those stuck places. You can re-discover the places you have forgotten, the dreams you put on the back burner…they are all waiting for you right where you left them.

And once you find them (which may be the easy part by the way) you have to decide what you are going to do about them. Because change is not easy. It may be simple but it won’t be easy---how many times have you heard me say that?
It isn’t easy to get off the fast food and soda binge train. It isn’t easy to start a consistent exercise program when just walking to the kitchen and back is a struggle. It isn’t easy to walk away from a long term relationship with no prospects on the horizon. It isn’t easy to find more rewarding work. But how long are you willing to live in that pain cave? How long will you stay in your rut? Long enough for it to be a grave? Is that the example you want to leave for the world to emulate? Are those the words you want on your headstone…”He settled for good enough?”

Change is hard. We have a natural resistance to change. We have a fear of the unknown and the older we get the larger that fear gets and the more calcified we become in our positions. But the alternative is worse…cowering in your pain cave, afraid to move, afraid to get out into the light, afraid of being the special person you are to become. There is no reason to be a pain-caveman. There is no reason you can’t change. And there is only one thing standing between the person you dream of and the person you are. And the thing that stands between those? You. You are in the way. The you that is your ego. The you that is afraid to change, afraid to turn on the light. So decide to get unstuck, to get out of your own way and start moving toward the light. You deserve it and you owe it to the rest of us.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...You can't fool Mother Nature

Sunday Story…You can’t fool Mother Nature

Spring appears to have begun to banish winter. Of course we will still have some nasty days…even today the wind is brisk and biting. It will probably snow at least one more time. But things are stirring and awakening both in the garden and the flower beds but inside of each of us as well.

Your body and your life really revolve around these seasons. And, just like the fashion industry, when spring arrives we start getting ready for winter. And believe it or not you will too. You see until about now you should have been in a dormant or hibernation type phase. Sleeping more, staying in and staying warm, conserving your energy, eating root vegetables, surviving on little to no sugar or carbohydrates. This was our life thousands of years before…before lights, electricity, refrigeration, supermarkets, and all the conveniences modern life has brought us.

And now that spring is awakening the earth and the creatures, including us the human creature, begin to stir from dormancy we start to range out of our caves. The days are longer and the nights shorter. Fresh food is more available. If you are a chicken farmer you begin to see an increase in egg production. The winter famine time is over. We did not starve to death. And here we are managing to get out and start foraging for our food so that we may get fat again to hold us over during the hungry months.

Wait…that isn’t our life anymore. Today we live in perpetual summer. We can stay up to 11PM every night. We can get up long before dawn every morning. We can eat fresh berries in December, apples in March, there is no reduction in the number of eggs in the grocery store. We can have fresh meat on the snowiest days and fresh fish when the lakes and streams are frozen over. We are no longer slaves to the seasons and the limitations nature has put upon those seasons. We are free to stay up late, get up on 4 hours sleep, pump ourselves full of caffeine, and eat to our hearts content on fresh fruit, processed high carbohydrate foods…yes free at last.

But freedom has a price. And now we modern humans have begun to have that price extracted from us. Most people do not even realize how far we have gone off the beaten track. Our ancestors knew to slow down in winter, to get fat in summer and live off the fat all winter. Yes, in many respects, like a bear. We slept more and ate less. Today we are doing the exact opposite…we are sleeping less and eating more and we are doing it all year round. We never give our bodies a rest from the barrage of high calories and the stress from less sleep and more activity. The cost of this activity is enormous.

You already know many of these costs: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, auto-immune disorders, and more. It is impossible to maintain a healthy weight and healthy lifestyle if you are constantly over feeding and under resting your body.
For many years we have been blaming diet alone for all of these ills. If you have lived very long, you know how the boogey men have changed. Saturated fat used to be the culprit in insidious weight gain, and then it was not enough of this or too much of that. Now we are blaming something else. Or maybe its lack of exercise this week. But then we start eating “healthy” processed food. We start hitting the treadmill 45 minutes a day. AND NOTHING CHANGES.
People are still fat. People are exercising and they still have diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and more. So what is wrong? Everything is wrong.
We are not eating the way we were designed to eat. We are not moving the way we were designed to move. And we are not resting the way we were designed to rest. We thought we were smarter than Mother Nature. We thought we had solved the mysteries of the universe; put it in a box of flaky “o”s or a brown bottle full of drugs or supplements. We were wrong and it is getting worse. We are the most overfed and under nourished people in the history of the world. On a worldwide basis the world produces more food than ever before. And more of it goes to waste and to our waist than ever before. Ladies and Gentlemen this is a crisis.

The crisis is simple: we have lost our mojo. We have fallen out of synch with the natural order of the world. We need to rediscover what all of us already know deep inside. We can feel it, especially right now. You can call it spring fever if you like. I know you can feel it. I can see it in the behavior of the kids I work with every day. I can sense the quickening in my own blood, the rising desire to forage and feed and find fuel. You can too.

This time is easy. The hungry months are hard. And in this world walking past the cornucopia of fresh fruits flown in from the southern hemisphere and not buying them is even harder. We are hard wired to want to eat calories to keep from starving. It is going to take more discipline than ever.

If you want to live a happier less stress filled life you need to get back in synch with the annual trip we are making around the sun. Over eating all year round is slowly killing you. The constant stress of spring is causing your body to do things inside that are not good indicators of longevity. The lack of sleep is creating havoc in your organs, bones and hormonal systems. The universe was designed to work a certain way and no matter how smart we may be there are laws that can’t be broken without consequences.

You can’t fool Mother Nature!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...the Letter

Sunday Story…The Letter

There is a letter you need to write. I don’t know who you need to write it to. I don’t know what the subject matter is and I don’t know why you need to write it. I just know you need to write that letter.

You have been sitting on something for quite some time now. I now I have been. Several some things to be exact. These are things that need to be released from your possession. These are things that people need to know, feelings you are harboring, resentments you have brewing, gratitudes that need to be shared.

No matter how old you are, there is a letter you need to write. And, if you are older, you may have lots of letters to write. Some of the people who you need to write to may be passed on, or out of your reach. This doesn’t matter; you still need to write the letter. You see writing the letter isn’t about the recipient it is about you, the writer. It is about you expressing and saying what you need to say and express.

You don’t have to send the letter. But maybe you should. Maybe someone is waiting to hear from you, needs to hear what you have to say, needs your gratitude, your forgiveness, your praise, your words of affirmation. It is up to you really but keep in mind that this letter carries a huge burden upon it.

You need to write from your heart, from the depths of your soul. You don’t need to be Shakespeare or Hemingway, you need to be honest, forthright, and passionate. The placement of your words only matters if you make it matter. What matters is the tone of your voice, what matters is the feeling your letters are carrying, what matters is that you write it.

Don’t worry about how it will be received, just write it. Don’t worry about the punctuation or the spelling (unless those things are important to you), just write it. Don’t worry that you aren’t going to do it right, just write it. Don’t worry about how it sounds or how the recipient will receive it, just write it.

Don’t wait. Tomorrow or next week or next year may be too late. We never know what the world may hold for any of us. If it needs to be said, it needs to be said now. It seems to me that one of the greatest tragedies in life may be not telling someone how much they are loved, or how important they are, or how much they have impacted your life. It feels like failing to say those things may be leaving a hole in two hearts, may be a crime against your soul’s evolution. Wouldn’t you want to know those things? I think so, I know I would.

There is a web site and a book…here is the link to the website: http://wouldhavesaid.com/ and the link to the book it there as well. Many of the letters are heart wrenching and moving. They are the inspiration for this post. I have many letters to write so perhaps I should provide you an example of my own…

I am not going to publicly name who this letter is for. The fact is I know he is a reader and I also know this is a letter I could write to many of my students…

Dear

We have been student/teacher for many years. I am writing this letter to tell you some things that I may not have been able to tell you in the day to day hustle and bustle of our lives. Over these years you have tried my patience, you have pushed every button you could find to push to provoke and nettle and needle me. You have even pushed some buttons I had no idea even existed for me.
Often it is said that the student is the teacher and not the other way around. In your case I have learned how to be more patient on the one hand and yet maintain high expectations. You have taught me to have fun even when there wasn’t much fun to be seen on the surface. On the other hand you have taught me that what I think is important may not always be the most important thing. You have helped to open my eyes to the struggles so many young people have in school, at home and just trying to grow up in today’s world. I am grateful for all that you have helped me learn and helped me grow. Because of you I am a better, more compassionate teacher.
I am sure you have felt that I was too hard on you, that I was expecting more than you could give. I did, do, and will continue to ride you (as we say) like a rented mule. You see I hate to see wasted potential. I hate to see gifts given wasted and squandered. I wonder if I didn’t waste and squander some of the ones I was given. I would hate for you to look back in 20 years and wonder why I didn’t ask more of you, expect more of you, and demand more of you. It isn’t in my job description to let you fail, slack off or just generally not live up to the tremendous potential I see ahead for your life. I am gladdened when I see your improvements in stepping into your gifts, skills and talents.
Mediocre should not be in your description. You are not average. You are not mac & cheese in a white box. I know this in my heart and I have tried to get you to see it. And every once in a while I think you do. You are an amazing and special human person. You have gifts, skills, talents, and leadership to offer the world. The world will be a smaller and less abundant place if you do not step into who you can be. I am looking forward to being part of that continuing journey.
Thank you for having the perseverance to continue on this journey. I know it has not all been a bed of roses for you. I know it has been hard. I also know you are about to explode into your power as a martial artist, a student and human being.
I am proud to have been your teacher over these last few years. I am prouder to have been your student.
With honor and respect,
John Mariotti

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Looking into the Abyss

Sunday Story…Looking into the Abyss

It’s hard. Really, really hard and every bone, every sinew, every muscle in your body is screaming at you to stop. Just stop already and rest. This isn’t for the $50,000 check; it isn’t for the championship belt or even playground bragging rights. It’s just a simple little workout or a run up the street and back but it feels hard. It feels like you would rather die than continue. You know you aren’t going to die but your body tells you that you need to stop or you will die.

So what do you do? Do you stop and rest? Giving up on continuing because it’s just too hard? Slow down a bit and TRY to continue? Or do you just say to heck with it and keep on pushing? Keep running hard, keep fighting for air and somewhere in your mind you own your body and you stop when you are done, the task complete?

This is the quality known as mental toughness. This ethereal, hard to touch thing is what separates the utility player from the champion. The champion continues until he is done. The champion always finds time to practice. The champion’s mind is always in the game.

This quality is very hard to teach. But it is one of the most important qualities in sports, business, and life in general. In my explorations I have to say I have no idea how to imbue this quality in people. I have no tried and true blueprint for success in this area.

As I look into my own life I see a pattern of seeing things through to the end. Sometimes past the bitter end. I set out to do something and I am going to finish it. Honestly this is not always a good thing. There was a 50 mile foot race about 4 years ago that I should have quit long before the finish. There were several good reasons to throw in the towel…a minor injury, hydration problems, and a couple others. But I always just said, I can go a little more, a little more. And I did all the way to the finish. And that was my last foot race of any length. My knee (which already had a torn meniscus) was a ragged hot mess the required surgery several months later. Mentally tough, yes but probably not the best decision at the time. I get to say I finished…dead last.

Where do we get that quality though? The one that says I will finish no matter what? The thing that says they will have to drag me off the field kicking and screaming if I haven’t finished? Was there a process that some people went through to get this? If so what was it? Because if there is I really don’t know what it is.

Some of it has to be self pride. I don’t want to get up in the morning tomorrow and have to say to myself you could have done more. You could have gotten 1 more repetition, one more round, could have tried just a bit harder. I don’t want to have to face myself knowing I didn’t put it all on the line, didn’t give it my best effort.

Then again maybe it’s ego. The part of me that just won’t let go, that hates to ask for help, hates to admit defeat or failure in any arena, even when overmatched, out gunned and clearly defeated. I hate to lose. I hate to admit I wasn’t good enough, that I hadn’t trained hard enough, and that there was some rock I left unturned in my quest for success. Ego can be a huge driver, not always a good one.

Probably most important though is what we often refer to as “indomitable spirit.” Get knocked down, go back train some more, return and get knocked down again. Go back to the drawing board come back and do it all again. How else to Thomas Edison suffer over one thousand failed light bulb attempts? How does Michael Jordan shoot 100 free throws every day for years? How is it that Jerry Rice was always the last guy to leave the practice field and the first to arrive? But how do I find that indomitable spirit. How do I fan the flame of ego, self pride and courage? What makes one of us do it and the other to roll over and die, to quit before the bell rings?

You get this a little by little every day, on the practice field, on the training mat, on the gym floor…when no one is looking, when nothing is on the line. When you show up and you really don’t want to be there, your body hurts, your mind is tired and you sense a futility in the effort. When you suck it up in that moment and step into that abyss you will find the banked coals of victory, glory and success. Success isn’t always about winning or being first. Success is getting up and looking in the mirror knowing you left nothing back, there wasn’t one more anything to be had. You put it all on the line and win, lose, or draw you were successful because you showed up and spent the physical, mental and psychic energy getting the job done. You find this mental toughness in those quiet places, when you are standing on the edge, when fear is upon you and you step into the unknown. What you will grasp is the ethereal thing made up of ego and pride and indomitable spirit that is going to propel onto the next plateau.

Mental toughness it’s what’s for breakfast. And Lunch. And Dinner.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...RnRnR

Sunday Story…RnRnR

The three pillars of optimum physical health are nutrition (diet), exercise, and rest. We talk a lot about the first two but the fact of the matter is rest, recuperation, and recovery is often given the short end of the stick.

Let’s be honest, we live in a culture where rest is seen as the province of the weak. Taking a break, going to bed early, sleeping in, taking a nap are activities for children, not grownups. I have heard it said and have said it myself…”I can rest when I’m dead.” I often hear things like sleep is over rated and talk to many people for whom sleep is the least important part of their regimen.

It is time to shift that attitude. You may have heard the phrase…”nothing tastes as good as strong feels.” Here is a new on to try on for size…”sleep is to health as food is to life.”
For many years I worked 16 to 18 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. It was a choice. I was young, full of energy and enthusiasm, vim and vigor and dedicated to what I was doing (which, honestly was mostly about making money). Over the years I got tired. Yet every success book I have ever read told me that in order to be really successful I should get up an hour earlier every morning. That first hour of the day would be my most productive and I would have gotten more done before most people ever got up in the morning. The trouble for me was that I could and would fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Unlike the energizer bunny, as soon as I stopped I was completely out of gas. It was like putting 2 dollars of gas in your car…and constantly running out. Frankly it happened at some pretty embarrassing times…even in mid-sentence once or twice!

For thousands of years we lived in harmony with the rising and the setting of the sun. Think about it…before we tamed fire there was no reason to stay awake past sundown and no reason not to awaken when the sun came up. Then we learned to keep fire and our caves could be lit for some period of time past when the sun disappeared. But there really wasn’t much compelling reason to consistently stay up much past the setting of the sun. Now, however, we have electricity and it was the advent of the electric light that has us compelled to stay up way past the bedding down of the sun. What we have created is a perpetual summer.

In nature we would sleep more in the winter when the sun spent less time in the sky and sleeping less in the summer. This rhythm of the seasons, the pulse of the way life worked has been altered for better or worse. None of us want to return to the days of no lights and no electricity. And I don’t think we should either.

But we really need to sleep more. We really need to rest more on an annual basis. The winter is the time for hibernation. The summer is the time to prepare for winter. In winter we rest, in summer we forage, mate, roam and find new hunting grounds. Bragging about being able to survive on 4 or 5 hours of sleep should not be a point of pride but rather a place of sadness. We running our engines into the ground but not shutting them off long enough.

We prioritize lots of things…food,, exercise, money, family, TV, late night snacks. What would happen if you prioritized sleeping 8 or 9 hours a week? When was the last time you slept 8 or more hours a night for several nights in a row? And then several weeks? How good would you feel? Do you have any idea? I know I didn’t.

We tell our children that they need lots of sleep because they are growing, because their young bodies and brains need to recuperate from the frenetic activity all day long. This makes a lot of sense to us…yet your adult body is regenerating billions of cells every night. These are cells you need every day to maintain your health. There is no supplement you can take to make up for lost sleep. Again there is no magic pill.

This week I have gotten 8 or 9 hours of sleep for 4 nights running. I never knew (at least for a really long time) how good it was to feel like this…rested, without droopy eyelids whenever I sat down and relaxed for 2 minutes. Just like when I shifted my diet and realized how bad the food I was eating was making me feel---which I had no idea of by the way---I have now learned that when I sleep the proper amount I feel so much more alert, so much more vitalized and so much more alive that having 10 extra hours a week to “get things done” is actually counterproductive…I am not as creative, I am not as efficient and I am nowhere near as happy.

Here are some basic tips to sleep better…sleep in a completely darkened room. This is huge…I thought my room was dark until I really looked at it…now I hang black out curtains and keep the door closed to create a very dark space. I also try to darken the whole house to contribute to the proper atmosphere. Lower the temperature in the room. Use blankets and such to stay warm but lower the atmospheric temperature by opening a window slightly or turning the thermostat down. If the ambient noise is a problem wear earplugs. When you get in bed, turn the lights off and go to sleep…don’t read and never watch TV (too stimulating on a number of levels).

Sleep is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Sleep will change your life. Try it you might like it.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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